Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
Are we to believe that authors would be saying to themselves " I guess I better not write another book, if I'm only going to collect on it for thirty years."
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That's not believable. You are right on that.
But if just the US changed to thirty years, I think that some of the most influential people in the world would instantly experience a decline in backlist royalties and thus have a new big reason to hate us.
As for what would happen if most nations agreed to thirty years:
I may have posted in favor of 30 year copyright before, but tonight it feels too short for me. Readers could then commonly find bestsellers written by their contemporaries at gutenberg.org. This would make the public domain far more competitive against new books, reducing the incomes of agents, editors, and authors (I persist with the idea that it often takes a village to make a great book).
Someone may say that even works written by authors who died a century ago compete with new books. They do, but less so. And generations after authors have died, many eBooks will no longer be sold due to difficulty in determining ownership of rights. So a balance has to be struck between too-long copyright blocking availability, and too-short lowering incomes.
I'm going to stick with favoring Life + 50, at least until I change my mind again.